Climate change has arrived. It is no longer simply a threat for the hypothetical future generations, but a problem for our generation, and particularly, our children’s generation. For the first time, 2015 saw the global average temperature hit 1°C above than the pre-industrial era, moving perilously closer to the 1.5°C limit that countries committed to […]

BY YAHYA CHAUDHRY Last week, capping off a successful awards season, Mahershala Ali won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Moonlight — the first time a Muslim has won in an acting category. Ali portrayed Juan, a Cuban-born drug dealer living in Miami who becomes a surrogate father to a bullied […]

Relooking Cultural Integration and Cosmopolitanism in Singapore From the rash of online sentiments directed against foreigners during the 2011 General Elections through the Anton Casey, Ello Ed Munsel Bello, and Sun Xu incidents, it might appear to some observers that xenophobia has finally taken root in Singaporean society. Is the apparent level of antipathy some […]

BY NATALIE GOODNOW AND BOBBIE RAGSDALE Today is International Women’s Day, a fitting time to discuss a topic at the forefront of the news over the last several months: abortion and women’s rights. Though abortion has been legal for decades, the issue is still a contentious one in the public sphere. Unfortunately, many people today […]

BY JESSICA SCHAUER LIEBERMAN On February 25th, the Democratic National Committee chose Thomas Perez, former Secretary of Labor and Harvard Kennedy School alum, as its new chair. The media billed the election that resulted in Mr. Perez’s victory as a battle for the party’s soul — a clash between its leftist and establishment wings. The […]

On the evening of May 12, 2008, armed with machetes and clubs, neighbor turned against neighbor in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township. Gangs of young men raped and murdered black foreigners. Their belongings were looted and scattered in the streets. During these pogroms, local disdain for the makwerekwere, the foreigners, was clear. What began in Alexandra township […]

BY MATT TYLER I thought impact investing was central to curing social ills. Government was secondary, in my mind. I was wrong. Over the last 18 months, working with governments in the United States and Australia, I have focused on how to improve social outcomes for the most vulnerable. As a graduate student at the […]

BY HAIYANG ZHANG A group of textile artisans protested against the newly developed labor-replacing machinery. They were afraid that the many years they spent mastering the skills would go to waste and that the machines would eventually rob them of their jobs. The violence broke out when people started smashing the knitting machines, and eventually […]

BY CHRISTIAN ASANTE The first time I spoke to Sandra, we were both studying in the library. President Trump had assumed office five days earlier, and his string of executive orders consumed student conversations. Sandra asked me to watch her things for a few minutes, and when she returned, I struck up a conversation. “What […]

BY MAGGIE SALINGER Republicans are trying to seduce us by promising lower premiums and removal of the individual mandate. No longer will Obamacare encroach on personal freedom and financial stability, they boast. But let’s not be fooled by the ACA alternatives we’ve been seeing from the Hill. These plans are no better for us. In fact, […]

BY REILLY KIERNAN Why Uber and Lyft joining the fray was just good business, and why activists should consider lessons about businesses’ competitive environment and customer pressures. In an highly polarized political moment, where Super Bowl ads feature thinly-veiled references to policy, and corporate leaders of all kinds are attempting to find appropriate responses to […]

Water is the cornerstone of human life – but what happens to countries when they start running out of “blue gold”?